Andrew Patrick

Here is an intesting article from Wired on the placebo effect and the development of drugs. It seems that the placebo effect, improvements in medical conditions when a sham pill is given instead of the real drug, is getting larger. Long-established drugs are often found to have no benefit over placebo treatments. Doctors are only now starting to study the placebo effect and how it might be used for good, instead of treated like a nuisance in the testing process.

Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why.

The fact that an increasing number of medications are unable to beat sugar pills has thrown the industry into crisis. The stakes could hardly be higher. In today’s economy, the fate of a long-established company can hang on the outcome of a handful of tests.

It turns out that it is fairly easy to “create” DNA evidence to match anyone that you wish, so it is possible to plant evidence and frame a person. Standard DNA tests used in forensic labs are not able to detect such forgeries. This is another example of the need to carefully examine the science behind the forensic techniques that we use in criminal cases.

DNA evidence can be faked

In a release announcing the discovery, the company said, “standard molecular biology techniques, such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR), molecular cloning, and more recently available whole genome amplification, enable anyone with basic equipment and limited know-how to synthesize unlimited amounts of artificial (in vitro) DNA with any desired profile.”

Here is a report of a gang, apparently in Eastern Europe, who are infecting machines with special keyloggers that send back real-time records of bank transactions. This allows the criminals to conduct fraud at the same time as the user does their legitimate banking. These attacks make one-time password devices, such as the SecurID system, useless. In the online security game, the bad guys are winning…
How Hackers Snatch Real-Time Security ID Numbers

If you computer is infected, the Trojan zaps your temporary password back to the waiting hacker who immediately uses it to log onto your account. Sometimes, the hacker logs on from his own computer, probably using tricks to hide its location. Other times, the Trojan allows the hacker to control your computer, opening a browser session that you can’t see.

“What everybody thought was a very secure identification method, these guys found a low-tech means to get around it,” said Joe Stewart, the director of malware research for SecureWorks, a software company. “They don’t break the encryption; they just log in at the same time you do.”